1. Field Of The Invention
The present invention relates generally to a technique for retaining information on a host computer and, more specifically, to a technique for retaining test and identity information in a protected sector of a computer drive.
2. Description Of The Related Art
This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art which may be related to various aspects of the present invention which are described and/or claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present invention. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.
Computer systems are used for a wide variety of applications including personal computing. Typically, a computer system includes a hard drive. The hard drive may store various programs and instruction sets which may be used to control the system, implement various software programs stored in the system, and store desired information. Often, system errors occur and the hard drive is removed and sent to a supplier or a computer vendor for evaluation and possible debugging and repair. Oftentimes, however, the error resides in the operating system rather than the hard drive. Thus, drives are often removed and sent for repair by users who erroneously believe that there is a drive failure. Aside from wasting time and resources diagnosing a false failure detection, the removal, shipping, testing, and reinstallation of a drive may actually damage the device.
Another problem associated with the repair of hard drives is the fact that a user can reformat the hard drive. If the hard drive has not been reformatted, the drive supplier tasked with repairing the drive can extract certain information from the hard drive which may be helpful in determining the origin of the failure. However, more often the hard drive is returned to the supplier after having been reformatted. A reformatting of the hard drive generally overwrites information such as the original operating system type, the system serial number, factory information, etc. Often, there are no self tests which may be implemented by a user to verify a drive failure before the drive is removed from the system. In other words, most system tests are host based and can only be performed by the drive supplier. Not only may a hard drive contain initial setup information, but it may contain information pertaining to new operating systems which may have been installed or new components and drives which may have been added to the system, any of which may contribute to a hard drive failure. Thus, valuable troubleshooting information may be permanently lost if the drive is reformatted.
The present invention may address one or more of the problems set forth above.
Certain aspects commensurate in scope with the disclosed embodiments are set forth below. It should be understood that these aspects are presented merely to provide the reader with a brief summary of certain forms the invention might take and that these aspects are not intended to limit the scope of the invention. Indeed, the invention may encompass a variety of aspects that may not be set forth below.
In accordance with one embodiment of the present invention, a disk drive contains at least one sector that is protected from erasure, such as an erasure that may occur during reformatting. The sector(s) is used to store information related to one or more tests that may be performed on the disk drive and/or on other devices of a computer system in which the disk drive is located. This information may be used to facilitate a subsequent evaluation of the disk drive and/or computer system.